Question

I need to find what the first child of an element is.

For example:

<div class="parent">
    <div class="child"></div>
    <img class="child" />
    <div class="child"></div>
</div>

In this example the FIRST child is a div.

Another example:

<div class="parent">
    <img class="child" />
    <img class="child" />
    <div class="child"></div>
</div>

In this example the first child is a img.

Answer 1

Yet another one:

var tag = $('.parent').children().get(0).nodeName;

Or if you already have any other reference to the parent element, you can simply access its children property (assuming it is a DOM node, not a jQuery object):

var tag = parent.children[0].nodeName;

Reference: .children(), .get(), Element.children, Node.nodeName